


Power Over Nature

by NormalAnomaly



Category: Terra Ignota - Ada Palmer
Genre: Dialogue-Only, Fix-It, Fluff, Gen, actually smart characters would resolve the whole plot in five minutes, but that's not what I felt like writing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-28
Updated: 2019-07-28
Packaged: 2020-07-23 19:39:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20013721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NormalAnomaly/pseuds/NormalAnomaly
Summary: AU in which Bridger is raised by Utopians. Shameless fix-it trash. Somehow even more and stupider philosophical debate per sentence than the original.





	Power Over Nature

### Two Years Old

“Hi, kid. Remember me?”  
“Janeway! I petted your big long kitty-cat.”  
“That’s right. You don’t have a bash, do you?”  
“No.”  
“My bash’mates and I think you’re very interesting. How would you like to come be part of our bash? We live on the moon, and you could play with the pillarcat some more.”  
“That sounds fun!”

### Four Years Old

“Would you like to play a game, Bridger?”  
“Sure! Does it involve bridging things? Because that game where you had me bridge books of prime numbers was pretty boring.”  
“No, not this time. I’m going to show you some pairs of cards with pictures on them, and I want you to tell me what makes the pictures on the left card different from the pictures on the right card.”  
“That sounds maybe not boring.”  
…  
“You did very well at that game! What do you say we get ice cream from the replicator and watch some Star Trek?”  
“Yes!!”

### Six Years Old

“The Borg are really scary! Captain Picard is really brave, fighting them like that.”  
“Why are the Borg scary? Is it because they look like humans and aren’t? Is it because they have computers in their heads?”  
“Nooooo, Asimov, you’re being silly again! It’s because they want to make everybody the same! And if you make somebody the same as somebody else it’s like there are two of the second one and the first one is dead. So you’re dead and there’s even more of the person who killed you.”  
“You could bridge people who had been assimilated back into the people they used to be. Would that be right?”  
“Maaaybe? It would be sort of killing the Borg though. Oldest Bridger made me and I made Green-hair Bridger and they made Blue-hair Bridger and then you said to stop or we would run out of arcology to live in, and now if somebody killed one of me there would still be another three but I’d still be dead!”  
“But all the Borg share thoughts, right? So if you killed one the dead one’s mind would still exist inside the rest of them, and they could go on thinking. So they wouldn’t really be dead.”  
“I guess. But you still couldn’t turn them all back, or they wouldn’t have anywhere to keep existing in. Better to make something that would protect everybody from getting assimilated in the first place, and make new ones of anybody who had been assimilated already.”

### Eight Years Old

“I didn’t like that episode of Doctor Who very much.”  
“What didn’t you like about it?”  
“The Doctor killed Lazarus for turning into a giant scorpion-person, which was sort of okay because it stopped them from eating people, but they said it was Lazarus’ fault for trying to stop aging. But the Doctor doesn’t age, and with the anti-aging drugs we’re trying not to age anymore, and that hasn’t turned anybody into a giant scorpion who didn’t want to be a giant scorpion and none of them are eating anybody. So if it was Lazarus’ fault it was their fault for not being careful while they were doing experiments, and I don’t think they deserved to die for that.”  
“They probably didn’t deserve it, you’re right. But you still have to be very careful when you’re doing experiments! If you bridged the wrong thing, you might die, or somebody else might die, and it wouldn’t be fair but it would still happen.”  
“Of course. That’s why I have the no-no box, and I tell you and Asimov and all the other mes when I’m going to bridge something I haven’t before, so if I mess up there’s someone to fix it. But you shouldn’t stop doing experiments just because it’s dangerous. Also the Doctor is there to make the world be safer and less unfair; they shouldn’t tell people to just give up and die instead of doing anything risky! So it was still a bad episode.”  
“As long as you learn something from it, it’s still worth watching. But it wasn’t nearly as fun as usual, was it? Let’s watch another one.”

### Ten Years Old

“I think I know what I want on my coat when I grow up.”  
“That’s great! What do you want?”  
“I think I want it to look like the world as it is, except there are twice as many people and all of them are healthy and happy and have lots of useful things. Hey, stop hugging me, it’s embarrassing!”

### Thirteen Years Old

“Attention, people of Earth and the Moon! You saw me raise someone from the dead. I did it to stop a war, but you keep wanting to have the war anyway! So now I’ve taken over all your communications to tell you to stop. Whatever your problems are, killing each other won’t fix them! But I can. I can do a lot more than raise the dead and speak into all your trackers, but I won’t be helping any side in this war. You can’t find me--I can be anywhere in the solar system in a moment. You certainly can’t make me fight. But if you stop fighting, and find a stable system, and make the world safe to live in, I will come back. I will heal your sick and raise your dead and help you reach the stars together, all the Hives or whatever you decide to have instead of Hives! It’s up to you, Earth and Luna. I’ll be waiting.”


End file.
